As reported (CI No 1,976), IXI Ltd finally got its multi-million OEM deal with Digital Equipment Corp to the announcement stage last week, a process it has been working towards for quite some time. While DEC Europe has long been a strong advocate for X.desktop, DEC US originally opted for the rival Visix Inc Looking Glass product, and more recently began evaluating Hewlett-Packard Co’s Visual User Environment. X.desktop had the edge over VUE because of its availability under VMS, aside from any uncomfortable feelings DEC might have had opting for a product from one of its biggest competitors. DEC has licensed X.desktop, and both companies will work together to supply and integrate the product for DEC’s Motif-based Ultrix, OpenVMS and OSF/1 systems, both MIPS R-series and Alpha. Deals for existing DEC customers are currently being negotiated. DEC’s input into the product will be in the fields of usability, multi-media and document management, but the company is also considering how X.desktop might relate more closely to its other desktop system, Microsoft Windows and NT. IXI has its eye on the very same area, but is still working on the details. For the record, IXI’s other OEM customers are IBM Corp, NCR Corp, NEC Corp, Santa Cruz Operation Inc, Fujitsu Ltd, Groupe Bull SA and ICL Plc, accounting for one third of IXI’s business. There are curr ently over 200,000 copies of X.desktop out there, meaning, says IXI’s Ray Anderson, that over 75% of Motif users are now using X.desktop as their desktop manager. That makes it almost a de-facto standard, he says.
